The View from the Office. 

I met up with Leah March at Dream Dumpling, an eclectic restaurant tucked into the ground floor of a Harlem townhouse. It serves — as the name suggests — an assortment of steamed and pan fried dumplings. I had eight vegetarian dumplings and hot tea. 

Leah is a reporter at Albuquerque Business First, a publication that covers industry in New Mexico. She focuses on the so-called Borderplex, an area which includes Ciudad Juarez, El Paso and Las Cruces. 

Most Americans associate the Southern border with news stories about immigration. 

Leah has a different take. 

She notes that the region is large — it includes 2.5 million people — and it’s undergoing a rapid transformation. The Santa Teresa Port of Entry is the 6th fastest growing of 167 ports in America. It  handles $31 billion in trade annually.

Moreover, she said that “near-shoring” is taking off, driven by U.S. companies seeking to take advantage of low cost labor and Asian companies looking to diversify operations geographically. Higher tariffs against China have also spurred growth. 

Companies that have announced or moved operations to the Borderplex and the surrounding area in recent years include Tesla, General Motors, Bombardier, Whirlpool, Honeywell Medtronic and Samsung. 

Leah lives in Santa Fe which is removed from the border, but a good place to monitor the political pulse because it is where the New Mexico State Legislature meets. 

Leah is a graduate of my alma mater, St. John’s College, which has a campus in Santa Fe, as well as another in Annapolis. 

The school has a fixed curriculum focused on the Great Books. Freshman start reading Homer’s “Iliad” and end with works including Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.”

Leah said her favorite book from the program was Middlemarch by George Eliot, the story of a young, idealistic woman forced to face the realities of politics in a small English town. 

If you want to learn about the border reach out to her via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm introduction.